Jury Rigging and Supply Network Design: Evolutionary “Tinkering” in the Presence of Unknown‐Unknowns

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Pradyot K. Sen,Thomas Y. Choi,Surya D. Pathak,Stuart Kauffman
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12146

JURY RIGGING AND SUPPLY NETWORK DESIGN:

EVOLUTIONARY “TINKERING”IN THE PRESENCE OF

UNKNOWN-UNKNOWNS

STUART KAUFFMAN

University of Vermont

SURYA D. PATHAK AND PRADYOT K. SEN

University of Washington Bothel

THOMAS Y. CHOI

Arizona State University

Nobel laureate Franc

ßois Jacob wrote often about evolution as “tinkering”

in which parts and processes alone or together in cells and organisms

were co-opted for new functional purposes. Such behavior remains unex-

amined concerning how adaptive systems succeed in biology, supply net-

works, the economy, and beyond. In the presence of Unknown-Unknown

events (Unk-Unks) that have no prior occurrences and are evident only in

their realizations, the design of supply networks must allow for develop-

ing adaptive capabilities at the firm-level. When performed right, such

organic development in the supply network would mimic a biological

phenomenon of tinkering and natural selection. We describe enabling

such adaptive processes as jury rigging. We discuss how firms could

design their supply networks and organize their supply network ex-ante

that enables the network members to respond to Unk-Unks in an innova-

tive way through jury rigging of their relationships. Development of such

jury rigging capabilities requires integrative suppliers with deep embedded

relationships, enabled through appropriate incentives that include incom-

plete contracts with the suppliers and sharing of unspecified decision

rights.

Keywords: adaptive response; robustness; unknown-unknowns; complex supply net-

work; jury rigging; incomplete contracts

INTRODUCTION

Franc

ßois Jacob (1977), in his seminal piece “Evolu-

tion and Tinkering,” describes evolution of a living

system as a process of complex adaptation through

tinkering where parts and processes alone or together

in cells and organisms are co-opted for new func-

tional purposes. For example, the flagellar motor in

bacteria evolved by co-opting molecules serving differ-

ent functions in other bacteria. A persistent theme in

Jacob’s description of evolution and tinkering is attrib-

uted to utilizing hitherto unseen aspects of things in

response to demands posed by unknown conditions.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is appropriate to draw

a similarity between Jacob’s characterization of living

beings as an open system that “persists only by a con-

stant flux of matter, energy, and information (Jacob,

1977; p. 1163),”and supply networks as a complex

Acknowledgments: The authors thank the members of Complex

Adaptive Supply Networks Research Accelerator (CASN-RA) at

Arizona State University, for their feedback and support. Addi-

tionally, the authors gratefully acknowledge the thoughtful and

detailed suggestions from the anonymous reviewers and the out-

standing direction provided by the associate editor. Lastly, the

authors acknowledge Vince Darley and Bennett Levitan, from

the erstwhile BiosGroup for their work on the Job Shop problem

and the Lego World.

January 2018 51

Journal of Supply Chain Management

2018, 54(1), 51–63

©2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.